Avaya Adds to VENA Virtualization Effort with Switch, Software

Avaya at Interop will be showing its new VSP 7000 switch and Virtual Provisioning Service software, part of the company's larger VENA initiative.

Avaya
is adding to its larger data center virtualization strategy with a number of
new products, including a new top-of-rack switch, management offerings and
services.
Avaya
will showcase these new offerings at the Interop 2011 show, which kicks off May
8 in Las Vegas.

The
products and services will add to Avaya's
VENA (Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture), which the company
introduced in November 2011 and which is designed to simplify the operations of
data centers as they become more virtualized and extend to branch offices and
other remote locations, according to Bill Siefert, CTO of Avaya's data
solutions portfolio.

The
drivers in the data center are the growing adoption of cloud computing and
virtualization technologies, and the increasing mobility of workers and their
devices, Siefert said in an interview with eWEEK.
"That's
been the recipe for essentially where the network has been heading, where it's
working all the time, and it's got to be something you can control with fewer
people," he said.
The
Avaya VSP (Virtual Services Platform) 7000 is a 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet
switch that can scale up to 40GbE and 100GbE, and also supports native Fibre
Channel for storage connectivity. The device is designed to make data
centers less complex, easier to manage and more cost effective, according to
Avaya officials. It also will support a multi-terabit fabric interconnect
stack, switch clustering, Virtual Services Fabric-Avaya's network fabric,
enabled by the Shortest Path Bridging standard-Edge Virtual Bridging for
facilitating communication between virtual and physical switches, and FCoE
(Fibre Channel over Ethernet).

Avaya's
VPS (Virtual Provisioning Service) is virtual management software within the
VENA offering that helps IT professionals better track and manage, provision
and troubleshoot their virtual machine environment, Siefert said. The software
can work with VMware's VCenter management tool, he said. If something changes
in the virtual machine environment, VPS can be notified by VCenter and then
create new configurations for the impacted virtual machines to adapt to the
changes.
"It
automates the processes and increases reliability," Siefert said.
Avaya
also is offering a suite of professional services designed to help businesses
more easily bring Avaya's VENA technology into their environment.
The
company gained the technology for the VENA strategy through its $915
million acquisition of Nortel Networks' enterprise business, which included
Nortel's switching and routers business as well as its unified communications
products. At the time of the deal-which Avaya completed in December
2009-analysts said they saw Nortel's communications portfolio as the real gem
in the acquisition.
Avaya
had been in the switching and router business, but analysts were unsure whether
it would keep that part of Nortel's product line.
VENA
is designed to give businesses a complete networking architecture that
stretches from the desktop to the data center, with the Virtual Services Fabric
being the basis.